The Georgia Heirs Property Law Center Explained
What is the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center?
The Georgia Heirs Property Law Center (GHPLC) was established at Georgia State University College of Law in 2009 with the purpose of furthering the low-income housing and non-profit development missions of ATLANTA LEGAL AID SOCIETY, INC. (ALAS), a widely respected non-profit law firm based in Atlanta that has been around for over 90 years and Georgia State University College of Law. The Center operates the nation’s only comprehensive academic program in social justice advocacy with an emphasis on a clinical education component – in cooperation with Atlanta Legal Aid Society.
GHPLC serves Georgians residing in houses not owned by anyone but held in a "heir property" status, creating severe uncertainties about the use, value, ownership and long term marketability of the house and often dangerously too near to tax foreclosure. Continuous land usage, or purported land usage, by other heirs can cause irreparable harm to the interests of some if not all heirs.
Continuous land usage can also constitute an unpermitted alternative non-economic "land use", which disvalues the land to traditional buyers and lenders and raises down payment and construction lending costs to a point out of reach of the family . Land insecurity often leads to tension, violence and disruption. GHPLC seeks to stabilize succession land tenure in Georgia by securing land title for families of low to moderate income, especially low income families in the low to moderate income neighborhood context, whose land tenure is clouded by uncertainty of ownership from the heir-property status of the title.
GHPLC achieves this goal through two relatively new statutory devices; The Georgia Heirs Property Law Center serves as a clearinghouse and statewide referral center for resources and assistance that GHP will develop and make available to its community partners. It provides pro bono and low bono legal services to the organized low income communities of Georgia to help those communities address heir property issues.
GHPLC uses these statutory tools to create a unique combination of full spectrum legal services, financial literacy education, access to mortgage credit and other asset building goals.
Heirs Property Challenges in Georgia
In Georgia, many – if not most – rural black families own land they have inherited from their ancestor without a will. This land is commonly known as heirs property and is the result of the arbitrary roll-back of black land ownership after Emancipation and the legal imposition of the Rule against Perpetuities, which prohibits American citizens, including Georgia citizens, from creating unbreakable multi-generational trusts. The result is that there is no statutory or common law right of free alienability of heirs property, which means what usually happens is the land gets mistreated and runs down to nothing so that at the next generation there is no interest left which would make it attractive to purchase by an outsider. Consequently, the land just becomes more fragmented between the heirs.
Over time the land often becomes over-fragmented so that the economic and legal difficulties of owning multiple indivisible interests are aggravated, to the point it is virtually worthless. To make the land valuable again, someone has to purchase the whole land so that it can be reconstituted into an economically viable unit. However, purchasing the land from the current owners is almost impossible because any sale will require unanimity as each interest must contractually agree to the sale. By the time heirs properties have succeeded to the current ownership structure, often the family line is so dispersed that the need for unanimity almost guarantees that nothing will get done with the land. The land is then usually lost to the next generation as it frequently falls into tax delinquent land status.
Overcoming the economic challenge of heirs property requires both education of the landowners on how best to develop the land, and also a path to the reconstitution of the land by purchase by the family or a third party. This is why the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center, LLC, which I assisted in establishing in 2013, was created.
Services Provided by the Law Center
Services Offered by the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center
The Georgia Heirs Property Law Center is dedicated to providing quality legal assistance to individuals possessing heirs property structure. Legal assistance comes in a variety of forms, and their attorneys make it a point to focus on providing education and resolution strategies for problems that heirs property can present for members of a family. Videos, brochures, a blog, and guidance from their social media accounts are just some of the methods in which they provide communication about resolving issues around property that has been passed down through familial generations without a Will.
Other resolution strategies include their "Adverse Possession Project," the goal of which is to resolve cases with the use of quiet title actions. Quiet title actions are a means by which to resolve multiple heir property ownership claims under a single family member’s name. In addition to their quiet title actions, Georgia Heirs Property Law Center provides litigation and administrative service assistance, deed preparations, and deed corrections, among other legal services.
The scope of issues that families face regarding heirs property can be daunting, and the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center seeks to provide help to guide families through them.
Effects in Georgia Communities
Communities at risk of losing land to foreclosure, loss of inheritance or other means are better served by the work of the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center. In Fulton County alone, 1 of 3 properties of families in court is at risk of being sold at foreclosure or execution sale. Incorporated or not, and regardless of income status, there are properties that can fall into this status where they were passed down through the family and all living heirs may not have a part in the disposition of the land. Also, some of the heirs may have fallen away from contact with the family and may no longer have a claim to the property. These are just a few of the common issues, and representing either the heirs or the third party seeking to purchase the land to give back to the family, the center has had many successes.
To this point, the center reports it has saved 32 families and identified 71 parcels of land as having heirs property issues. It has also handled existing property matters including development for transit-oriented communities, a stockpile of land use plans and coordination of work with the City of Atlanta, Atlanta Housing Authority and Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership to use properties for affordable housing.
The center has saved families in Buckhead, Amazing and Stone Mountain. In Buckhead, a 1945 house was built on a $300,000 lot with the home’s owner having already died out of the family. The family came to the center seeking property ownership as sisters were in danger of losing their right to the lot. By focusing on the birth certificate, it was determined the estate had been probated in 1983, and once the family showed proof of family kinship, their legal interests were established. The family then made collective decisions and took action to keep this home, which was selling for open market values recent appraisals had determined was $200 per square foot. Similar success stories have been realized in Inman Park and East Point, where unity resulted in successfully keeping the families expected interests in the properties.
How to Get Help from the Law Center
The Georgia Heirs Property Law Center provides support to indigent Georgia residents who own, or who are a descendant of the person who owned, real property in the state as a tenant in common. Owners can be a direct descendant, or a descendant of a sibling of the resident. To access assistance from Georgia Heirs Property, it is requested that clients provide the following information to ensure their eligibility:
If you meet the above eligibility requirements, you may complete an application for Legal Services by downloading the application, completing a hard copy , or completing the application electronically. Completed applications can be mailed to Georgia Heirs Property at P.O. Box 2483; Savannah, Georgia 31402.
If you are unsure if you are eligible for this assistance, you are welcome to call the Center and speak with the Pro Bono Coordinator about your situation.
Going through the probate process can be an overwhelming experience and, especially with someone who may be spending their first time learning the Georgia probate process, the pro bono attorneys of the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center aim to put the client at ease by guiding them through every step of the process.
Collaborations and Partnerships
Families living on heir property in Georgia face special burdens regarding property taxes. Now, counties around Georgia are making it a little bit easier for families to work out their issues with heirs property.
This year the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center and the University of Georgia Carl Vinson Institute of Government started a new partnership, providing tax webinar training for county tax assessors, appraisers, tax collectors, and others on issues related to heirs property and impoverished rural landowners. The seminar was recorded and is available here: 2016 Heirs Property Webinar for County Tax Officials. The University of Georgia Vinson Institute will also begin rolling out new training materials on heirs property, including updated training slides. Vinson Institute attorney Julie Evans noted that the Vinson Institute had provided successful tax seminars in Evans and Quitman counties. "We look forward to working with County Officials across the state to continue to address the issues surrounding heirs property. It is critical that County Officials are aware of the special considerations when assessing property taxes owed by those owning land in common with other heirs," Evans said. Georgia Heirs Property Law Center attorney Cara Zwibelman noted that last year, Lowndes County became the 13th county in the state to adopt a county policy to help people owning heirs property, allowing heirs property owners an exemption from the rollback on their property taxes for ten years, but that because of the location in rural South Georgia, many families still cannot afford the property taxes no matter the exemption. "We understand how difficult it is for many families to be unable to pay the taxes on heir property, and we appreciate the Vinson Institute’s efforts to educate tax assessors and collectors on how to work with those families to try to solve or reduce the tax burden."
Future Projects and Objectives
The work that is being done at the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center is only the first step in a larger initiative to force positive change and innovation in how we address the legal needs of the heirs property community in Georgia. And in many respects, the development of the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center has been just about the least innovative thing to happen in Georgia regarding heirs property-related law practice. For instance, the center, which was started with a mini-grant from the Georgia Bar Foundation, will be at the forefront of Georgia dispossessory litigation on behalf of eligible clients. Other than the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center, there are only three other organizations in Georgia (Georgia Legal Services Program, Atlanta Legal Aid Society and John Marshall Law School) that conduct civil legal aid work on behalf of Americans Living with HIV/AIDS . Those agencies do a great job, but there is simply no way that type of agency could nip away at the problem of heirs property in our state. The Georgia Heirs Property Law Center’s plan is to both expand the geographic reach, as well as the scope of services provided by the center. Personal/professional development of the lawyers providing representation to these families as a strategic objective can only enhance the representation provided. Geographically, the goal would be to expand to 30 more counties within 5 years, in an effort to go deeper within the communities served, as well as to provide efficient, economical access to larger numbers of families. Eventually, I see the center exiting Georgia, to provide desperately needed help to other states where heirs property is a huge problem for low to moderate income families. Sooner or later, enough counties in Georgia will have attorneys trained and available to take on this work, so the center, as a Georgia entity, will no longer need to exist.